Gerencia De Operaciones

1. Why is quality so important to businesses? How can you improve quality?
Quality is a very important factor for businesses since the lack of it will result of bad brand/service reputation. It’seasier to maintain customers that to create new ones. Also a low quality product may (and will) cost more at the end since a whole production could end up as scrap, needing more time to re-do aproduct, high cost of recalls, fines and may happen as well legal issues. In the service case is more subjective, but equally important. This will be estimated on how the customer perceives the wait and theoutcome of it.
Quality can always be improved by analyzing all the processes that are involved before the outcome. A good statistical estimation of the sample size needed is crucial, since underverifying can lead to a higher % of non-compliance products and overestimation, will just be a waste of time. Testing and monitoring of all aspect is not only recommended, but needed to have a X certaintyof what we are delivering.

2. What are the different dimensions of quality? Give real world examples of such dimensions.
The dimensions of quality include the Performance, Features, Reliability,Conformance, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics and Perception. My best example was my first car, a 1989 Toyota Tercel. Even when I bought a car 10 years old, it was fuel efficient, only went tothe mechanic for the usual maintenance, the parts for it were accessible everywhere, was a safe car to drive, the construction was a strong one, even when the paint was faded the outside of the carnever got rusty. It didn’t have all the features I would want, but it did have the ones that were expected for the price: air conditioning and a radio. It is obvious that my perception of the brandfulfill all my requests, and even with the latest quality issues is a brand I trust and all my family relies on. (We all own a Toyota)
3. What is the purpose of TQM and the philosophy behind it?
The...